St. Vincent's goal is to become and remain the most trusted, personalized, and useful source of health information, health-related decision support, and health-related e-commerce on the Internet. The protection of your privacy is of the greatest importance to us. We believe that you have the right to understand how your information is stored and used. Our privacy commitment is described in this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy will let you know the following:

What Information St. Vincent's Collects From You
How St. Vincent's Uses the Information that it Collects
Who Else Collects Information From Your Use of St. Vincent's
What Are Your Choices As to Collection, Use and Distribution of Information
Children's Privacy
Security Measures in Place
How St. Vincent's Can Modify This Privacy Policy
How You Can Contact St. Vincent's About this Policy
What Information Does St. Vincent's collect from me?

Our web server automatically recognizes your domain name. Our web server does not recognize your e-mail address. Most of St. Vincent's has been designed to not require the use of any personal identifiers (such as name, address, telephone number or e-mail address). IF YOU SEND US AN E-MAIL OR SUBSCRIBE TO A NEWSLETTTER, WE WILL HAVE YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS AT OUR SITE.

You may request delivery of content, service, or merchandise to your e-mail address or an off-line destination, or you may elect our more personalized services. If so, you will be notified of the need to provide personal identifying information to us or to another company providing the content, service or merchandise. You may choose whether to request the services or utilize the services.

We use "cookies" to personalize our site for you and to collect aggregate information about site usage by all of our users. A cookie is a text file that our web site transfers to your computer's hard drive for record keeping purposes. The cookie assigns a random, unique number to your computer. It does not contain information which would personally identify you. Our log files contain "clickstream" information (data reporting the categories or sections on [our site] that you have visited) along with the cookie information.

If you provide personal identifying information to us by using one of our services, or if you participate in one of our communities or discussion thread, we can connect that information with the data collected by our cookie so that such data will become personally identified.

How does St. Vincent's use the information that it collects?
We will only use the information to provide you with the services you have requested and as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy.
When you provide us with personal identifying information for a specific purpose, we may also use that information to personalize the site for you. We will not use that information to contact you for other purposes, unless use of that information is necessary for enforcement of any of the terms of this Privacy Policy.

Who Else Collects Information From My Use of St. Vincent's?
In order to bring you offers that are of interest to you and to help finance the cost of making our site available, we have relationships with other companies that we allow to place advertisements and/or product and service offers on our web site. As a result of your visit to our site, these advertising service companies may collect information such as:
1. your domain type
2. your IP address (binary code address for your domain)
3. "clickstream" information (data reporting the categories or sections on our site that you have visited).
Our advertising service companies may place cookies on your computer. We do not allow our advertising service companies to collect personal identifying information about you without your express prior consent. Note that if you do provide personal identifying information to an advertising service company, it may be able to connect that information with the data collected by its cookie and other information it may have from other sources so that such data will become personally identified. Other sites linked to our site may also use cookies. For further information, consult those companies' privacy policies: for example, http://www.doubleclick.net:8080/privacy_ policy/

Unless it is necessary to provide you with the service you have requested, we will not disclose your personal identifying information to any third party; provided that a limited number of our employees, such as customer service representatives, and contractors providing services to us, such as market research companies, may have limited access to personal identifying information maintained on our systems. All are required to keep such information strictly confidential and to use it only as necessary to perform their responsibilities. Failure to do so may result in termination. We also take immediate steps to address any accidental disclosure to third parties which come to our attention.

We sometimes use, or supply to others, aggregated data (independent of any personal identifiers) for the purposes of target advertising, research and other commercial purposes.

Note that if you obtain dial-up access to our site from a third party independent Internet service provider (an "ISP"), it may have information relating to you which can be connected with information it collects about your usage of our site.

What Are My Choices As to Collection, Use and Distribution of Information?
If personal identifying information must be disclosed to a third party to provide a requested service, we will tell you, so you can decide whether to request the service [i.e. opt in or opt out].
You will always have the option of requesting that the personal identifying information be removed from our systems by contacting us at the address indicated at the end of this policy. If you register with us, you also have the right, upon reasonable notice, to view your registration information and make any corrections that are necessary. If you have requested e-mails from us, but you decide that you do not want to receive e-mails from us in the future, please contact us at the address indicated at the end of this policy.

What About Children's Privacy?
We do not intend to collect information from children. If we learn that we inadvertently have collected personal identifying information from a child under the age of 13, we will promptly delete that data from our systems.

What Security Measures Are in Place?
We have significant security measures in place in our physical facilities and in our computer systems, databases, and communications networks to strictly protect information contained within our systems from loss, misuse or alteration.

How Can St. Vincent's Modify this Privacy Policy?
We may decide to use information collected from you in new ways and our services may evolve to serve you better. As a result, we may from time to time change this Privacy Policy. It is your responsibility to check back here periodically.

Can I Contact St. Vincent's About this Privacy Policy?
If you have any questions or suggestions with respect to this Privacy Policy, or if you wish to ask us to delete or show you your information as provided above, please contact us at: info@stv.org.

Please check the privacy policy of any ISP that you use, or other company providing content, service or merchandise to you, as to its use of the information. We require that sites we link to include a notice identifying their privacy policies.

Click here to review the Notice of Privacy Practices for the St. Vincent's Health System